8vo. [36], 111, 202-593pp [i.e. 609], [41], [4]. Early, likely seventeenth-century vellum, yapp edges, faded manuscript titling to spine. Slightly rubbed, marked, upper joint split (and blank-fly leaves loosening) revealing three early manuscript vellum fragments beneath, lower joint starting. Small marginal rectangle removed from base of title, marginal loss to M4; two neat but now unintelligble manuscript notes to title, one likely an early name now obscured. Occasional marking, a little shaving to side-notes, else a crisp copy.

The first English edition of Harmonia confessionum fidei orthodoxarum & reformatarum ecclesiarum (Geneva, 1581), the first significant attempt to collect and translate the European Reformed and Lutheran confessions, i.e. those of Augsburg, Basle, Belgium, Bohemia, Saxony, Wurtemberg, France, England, and the two Helvetic Confessions). Originally conceived by Jean-François Salvard (c.1530-1585), this Calvinist answer to the Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1578 was completed by a team of protestant scholars including Theodore Beza.

One of the earliest books from the press of Thomas Thomas, the first printer to the University of Cambridge, this anonymous English translation also features - in a final supplementary section - the Scots Confession; a foundation document of the Church of Scotland, the compilation of which was supervised by John Knox. Edward Arber, quoting the earlier authority Martin, notes that the work, 'by that puritan Cambridg printer Thomas Thomas' was ordered to be seized by English episcopal authority.